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The young Malaysian boy used his finger to push the small animal off the cardboard and onto the ground while I stood in the shade of the dock next to him, looking at the soft gray fur of the tiny creature. It was so small it took me a moment to realize that it was a baby mouse. The boy ran down the shoreline in the opposite direction and came back with another baby mouse on the piece of cardboard. Meanwhile a little girl was poking the first baby mouse with a stick. Every time the mouse cried, the girl laughed and poked it more. The boy dropped the second mouse onto the ground from above his head. Feeling sorry for the babies, I tried to stop the girl from hurting it by taking the stick away. She picked up another stick and shoved it in the mouse's ear.
At that moment I noticed a cat prowling. Worried, I pointed from the cat to the mice and said "mackanan" ("food"). I thought I was warning the children to save the mice from the cat, but they ran over excitedly, grabbed the orange and white tabby cat and put it down in front of the mice. The cat studied one baby, pawing it softly. Then in one big gulp it swallowed the creature. I stood by feeling betrayed and sad.
The kids threw the second mouse into the ocean, laughing as it struggled to swim. As it began to drown I took the cardboard from the boy's hands and scooped the mouse out of the water. I placed it on the sand to dry, but looking up saw at least 15 village cats waiting expectantly to eat it. Some of the cats were playing with or eating other mice. I watched as the kids fed the wet mouse to another cat.
This incident reminded me of when I was young and my brother and his friend Ben would torture grasshoppers. They would make obstacle courses in the sandbox, and then tear the legs off the grasshoppers before putting them through the course. I would plead, "Just let them keep their legs!"